"Home is where you are loved. With brains, courage, heart and most
important, imagination...you'll walk through life with ruby slippers!"

While author L. Frank Baum is writing "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", his
housekeeper and a girl named Dot get swept up in his magical tale. Watch how
ordinary objects become the enchanted land of OZ and its delightful characters...and yes, Toto too!

"Me thinks you are my glass, and not my brother;
I see by you I am a sweet-fac'd youth!"

In Shakespeare's funniest and shortest comedy, two identical twin brothers
and their identical servants end up in the same town, having no idea the other
exists. Hilarity ensues with mistaken identities, confusion, and mayhem as the events build to the side-splitting solution!

Behold Antipholus of Syracuse, all done up in cantaloupe-colored robes and cascading curls like a Christmas gift from a Hare Krishna.

There's an actor beneath all that hair. And his extravagant coif, along with his fanciful beard and dress, are both blessing and curse for The Comedy of Errors, Orlando Shakespeare Theater's season opener.

There's no denying that Comedy's cast members look not only fabulous but loony -- those Lincolnesque beards, those fetching tie-dyed togas, those rivulets of hair. But it's hard to see the performers behind all that finery, and it's sometimes hard to get Shakespeare's words behind all the commotion onstage.

Granted, The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare at his silliest: You're not missing many earth-shattering insights if you don't understand every allusion in what may be Shakespeare's very first play. Lots of people will be happy just to revel in the foolishness, and for them there are plenty of heads bashed with turkey drumsticks and a long display of what the woman behind me called "Mel Brooks moments" -- in other words, an extended sequence of breaking wind.

Director Patrick Flick makes much of such moments, and he has on hand an array of actors who could pull laughs out of a rock. He also has the benefit of a great-looking production, with set designer Bert Scott's ancient-Greece set, all arches and ivy and baroque-looking statues; and costume designer Jack Smith's flights of fancy in shades of melon and blueberry and gold.

There amid the frippery unfolds the story of two sets of identical twins, both shipwrecked as children. One pair, the master Antipholus and his servant Dromio, winds up in ancient Ephesus, and the other pair -- also, strangely enough, named Antipholus and Dromio -- land in ancient Syracuse. When the Syracusian twins turn up in Ephesus, everybody seems to know them, and all hell breaks loose.

Comedy's actors do a lot with the situation, and some of them are masters of such stuff. Suzanne O'Donnell is a stitch as the spitfire Adriana, the bombastic wife of Antipholus of Ephesus; Sarah Ireland turns Luciana, Adriana's sister, into a cartoon-like baby doll. As Antipholus of Syracuse, Robby Pigott shows the comical frustrations of a traveler who stumbles into a world gone mad. And Brad DePlanche and Brandon Roberts make a perfect pair of mismatched twin servants -- Roberts the size of a twig, DePlanche quite a bit chunkier, both of them able to turn deadpan into a work of art.

Mark Lainer and Jason Horne are funny in smaller roles, and Anne Hering and Bob Dolan do well in serious ones. But too many of Comedy's cast members make too little impression, and you have to look hard to tell who's who behind the hair.

And too few of the actors know how to bring Shakespeare's verse to life. This tale of separated families shouldn't lose you in the telling, no matter how many pairs of carbon-copy twins set loose onstage. Too bad that the beauty of Shakespeare's words is lost in the tomfoolery.

This riveting one-man play fresh from a successful run Off-Broadway, exploresThe Merchant of Venice through the eyes of its controversial character, Shylock.
Experience an invigorating and thought-provoking evening exploring art, racism,
power, religious persecution, villainy and self-identity.

Reviews

New light shines on dark 'Shylock': The title character is easy to hate, but this gripping play elicits understanding and sympathy.
Elizabeth Maupin, ORLANDO SENTINEL

No wonder everyone is afraid of Shylock.

Look at the man, dressed all in black, his sober homburg resolutely covering his head. Listen to him denounce the Christians who have treated him ill.

But lend an ear to his story in Gareth Armstrong's intriguing play Shylock, and you'll think differently of Shakespeare's much-maligned creation.

For four centuries, Shylock has been one of the most difficult of Shakespeare's characters -- The Merchant of Venice's comical Jewish villain, the ogre who demands a pound of a Christian's flesh when the man neglects to repay a debt. Many theatergoers loved to hate him. Jewish theatergoers recoiled. Hitler is said to have loved the play. Some American schools have banned it.

So, in Shylock, writer-director Armstrong fills in all of Shylock's backstory. He doesn't let the intractable moneylender off the hook. But this one-person play so engagingly makes its case that your anger turns to pity, and understanding replaces disgust.

Shakespeare probably never met a Jew, at least not officially: They were banished from England in 1290 and not allowed back until 1656, 40 years after the playwright's death. So it was with the attitudes of Elizabethan society that he created Shylock, the Jewish usurer who is jeered and disdained by the men with whom he does business.

It's not clear what Shakespeare thought of Shylock (although he certainly gave the character more ambiguities than his contemporary Christopher Marlowe gave the title character in The Jew of Malta, who poisons an entire convent). Perhaps Shakespeare never knew about the "Jew badge" Shylock would have had to wear, or the belief in blood libel -- the allegations that Jews sacrificed Christians and drank their blood -- or the epithets Shylock might have been called, which are scrawled across the proscenium of Bob Phillips' expressive set.

For Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Armstrong has directed, with actor Steven Patterson taking on all the characters -- most significantly Tubal, a character with only eight lines in The Merchant but, importantly, a Jew who seems to be Shylock's only friend.

As Shylock, Patterson appears tall, shrewd and bitter; as Tubal, he's small and unprepossessing, and not only because he takes off Shylock's imposing hat. Patterson's apologetic, remorseful Tubal draws the audience into his story. And he makes the persecution of Shylock, and of his people, hit home in a new way.

It's a lens through which Shylock's audiences will see The Merchant of Venice -- a lens that will only sharpen Shakespeare's play.

Experience a world of wonder as a sad orphaned girl discovers a secret garden.
As she tends it, she experiences a wonderful transformation and learns to
help others love the garden so its magic will work on them too! An inspiring
story for the whole family!

Interested in producing The Secret Garden? Visit www.tyascripts.com for information about rights and availability.

There is a place in this world where secret rooms are waiting to be discovered, and mysteries just asking to be unraveled, one where it is possible to talk with birds, or walk on the edges of a misty moor in search of a hidden garden.

It is a place of gothic novels and adventure -- a place for The Secret Garden.

The Darden Foundation Theater for Young Audiences series at Orlando Shakespeare Theater continues with April-Dawn Gladu's charming adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett's classic, directed by David Lee. The production, which continues through Nov. 17, is rendered in a smart, appealing way and is perfect for families.

Young Mary Lennox is shuttled off to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England, after her parents die in a cholera epidemic in India. The spoiled girl (played with an impish delight by Jennifer Drew) is accustomed to having her own retinue of servants do everything for her but soon develops into a cheerful sprite -- no less willful, but far happier once she learns to do for herself. With her independent spirit and cheerful heart, she begins to have an effect on others around her.

While playing around the grounds of her uncle's estate, Mary discovers the key to a secret garden, a wild and long-forgotten place in need of love. Mary and her friend Dickon (Benjamin Cole) pour their energy and their joy into the neglected garden until the small patch of land blooms with the first tentative signs of life.

"It's magic," Mary says in wonder, and it could well be. Magic so strong it can revive the spirit of her sickly cousin Colin (Corey Loftus), long trapped by rigid rules in a lonesome part of the estate. Magic so powerful it can thaw the cold heart of her uncle, or make the spiteful housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, see the error of her ways.

To embody the idea of the garden's living soul, Gladu and Lee have an actor play the part of the Garden Tree, which watches over the action like a benevolent spirit. Indeed, as played by Jennie Sirianni, the tree is like a graceful wood sprite.

The Secret Garden is perhaps one of Gladu's best adaptations to date. She approaches the task with a delicate eye, moving the story along as briskly as possible to fit into an hourlong run time while maintaining the story's sense of gothic grandeur. Her touching interpretation is a perfect match for Lee's sense of visual drama. The production has so many lovely visual touches that add to the sense of mystery and magic surrounding Mary's secret garden. In the opening scene, a robin puppet glides by against a rich orange background, a nod to Julie Taymor's use of puppetry in storytelling. The set, which begins as a starkly beautiful lattice-work background, morphs into a moody English garden, wild and gray, just waiting to be reborn -- all with just a few touches of color.

The story has charm to spare, but the extra touches really bring a true sense of the magic to life, and leave you with a sure feeling that anything is possible if you just wish it so.

"At Didi's Used Weapons you'll have a Holly Jolly Christmas, and the criminal
will have a Silent Night!"

It's Christmas in the smallest town in Texas and their two radio personalities
report on various yuletide activities, including competition in the annual lawn
display contest. Join us for all the laughs as two talented men play all the
eccentric citizens in Tuna, Texas. Y'all come!

Reviews

Theatre Review: A Tuna Christmas
Living Orlando

Political correctness takes a holiday in "A Tuna Christmas", a comedy that is currently being performed by the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre at the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Loch Haven Park.

Opening in a radio station with the call letters OKKK, the small, Southern Baptist town of Tuna, Texas is full of quirky residents with little care for the outside world. The "Smut Snatchers", a local group trying to clean up the Christmas Story, hold the belief that "censorship is as American as apple pie." And there's Elmer Watkins of Clan 429, whose radio ads invite locals to attend the "whitest" Christmas party in town. Just about every character has something to say that wouldn't fly in the real world.

But the real story - and comedy - is found in the struggles of Tuna's residents, all of which are coming to a head this holiday season. Bertha Burmiller is one such resident, with her cheating, never-present husband, a son that's about to finish his probation and a daughter who's infatuated - and possibly in love - with the town's big-headed theatre director. Her dream of a normal, family Christmas is not only impossible, it's something that even she knows wouldn't make things right.

In addition to these personal stories, the holiday festivities in Tuna are under attack by a "Christmas Phantom." Various forms of sabotage have been used to ruin or alter the events around town with the signature event, a lawn decorating contest, being the main target. One resident, Vera Carp, is especially worried that her run of 15 straight years as the contest's winner is in jeopardy due to this unknown assailant.

In all, twenty two residents help tell the story of "A Tuna Christmas," a whirlwind comedy that will have you laughing out loud and left in amazement of the two actors who make up the cast.

That's right...two actors, playing eleven parts each, are all you'll ever see on stage. Philip Nolen and Brad Deplanche seamlessly transition between characters, maintaining the integrity of a list of personalities that includes the entire Burmiller family, a used gun saleswoman, a bed-wetting police officer and so much more. Their performances are so good that in some scenes, you half-expect additional characters to make an appearance. This is especially true in the final scene depicting the radio station's Christmas party.

As far as comedies go, this one is special because of its characters. While the story lines are very good (and funny), none of them are strong enough from start to finish to be the topic that people will first talk about when describing the show. Inevitably, the talk will start with the characters and the crazy personalities that the actors are able to portray. That's probably what the writers intended, anyway.

Welcome to the wonderful Forest of Arden where true love prevails. Fall in love
again as Rosalind and Orlando, two of Shakespeare's most romantic lovers,
run away to the forest and discover how "all the worlds' a stage." A delightful
romantic comedy!

"That's why a resonant hall is so poignant -- the notes last a half-second
longer, giving the brief illusion of immortality."

The huge hit reading of PlayFest! 2007 becomes the premiere this season.
A world-renowned string quartet has only a week to rehearse Beethoven's
"Opus 131" for a performance at the White House. Tempers and partners flare
as the pressure increases. The Orlando Sentinel proclaimed, "The audience
loved this comic drama."

Reviews

Opus
Carl F Gauze, ARCHIKULTURE DIGEST

We associate office politics with big corporations and hand-to-hand combat with marriages. But take the worst of both worlds, and we find ourselves in the middle of The Lazzara Quartet. These 4 string players struggle with artistic and financial direction, fight schoolyard battles with no 3rd grade teacher to moderate, and suffer painful personal attacks with no opportunity for make-up sex. We meet them as they teeter on the brink of success while seeking a replacement player for the unstable and recently fired Dorian (T. Robert Pigott). He was lover to bossy Elliot (David Karl Lee), but this sort of intergroup romance is always a bad idea. Dorian saw music no one else could, and perhaps his genius was worth his undependability, but replacement Grace (Meagan English) just might be his equal, and you won't have to worry about her missing a dose of Lithium. Calm and collected Alan (C. S. Lee) books the group into the White House and a full 25 minutes of fame, but they have one week to rehearse and their 4th member Carl (Nowicki), has a touch of cancer bugging him. This should be one impressive concert, at least backstage.

"Opus" appeared in last year' PlayFest as a workshop, and while this version lacks major script changes, it feels tighter and slicker. The cast packs some real star power, with the PlayFest special Guest C. S. Lee in the lead role as a skeptical and detached musician, fed up with his quartet fellows and wishing they could leave their personal problems outside. Pigott bubbles along, always showing the bright, positive face of manic depression, but you'll wonder what he saw in David Lee's prissy and bossy Elliot. Grace and Alan make for a more believable chemistry, even as the specter of another inter band romance haunts the quartet. Nowicki's wild hair and flustered parent persona gives him the look and feel of a prophet wandering the desert, seeking to redeem the rest of the cast from everything that leads to apostasy from gospels of Bartok and Beethoven.

There's a smooth soundtrack of Lazzara strings supporting the cast as they constantly prodding each other about minor errors in playing. Director Routhier assures me those errors are real, but they are so minor it takes a much better ear than mine to hear them. Fortunately, this cast MAKES me believe I can, and that's more than enough. "Opus" immerses you in highest levels of musicianship, but keeps the problems right down here with us mortals. It's theater at its finest.

"…new works by recognized and up-and-coming playwrights…high-quality acting and directing and scripts with a lot of potential..." - Orlando Sentinel

PlayFest has grown into a 10-day celebration of new play readings,
workshops, panel discussions and keynote addresses from nationally
recognized playwrights. Many of our readings have returned as full
productions including Around the World in 80 Days, Every Christmas
Story Ever Told, Robinson
Crusoe, Crime and Punishment,
and this year's Opus. PlayFest…it's what's next!

Showtimes

Sponsors

Mandell Studio and throughout the Lowndes Shakespeare Center
Various Times

Harriett Lake
Orange Country Arts & Cultural Affairs
Orlando Weekly

Full Productions

OpusBy Michael HollingerFebruary 6 - March 9, 2008
Wednesdays, Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Fridays, Saturdays at 8 p.m.
Sundays at 2 p.m.
Goldman Theater
The huge hit reading of PlayFest! 2007 becomes the premiere this season.
A world-renowned string quartet has only a week to rehearse Beethoven's
"Opus 131" for a performance at the White House. Tempers and partners flare
as the pressure increases. The Orlando Sentinel proclaimed, "The audience
loved this comic drama."

Special Events

A Keynote AddressWriting What Matters
John Pielmeier, Author of Agnes of God
Saturday, Feb. 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Margeson Theater
Free with PlayFest button
Followed by a one-time only reading of the first act of
his new play, Madonna and Child. Madonna and Child contains strong language and mature content.

Panel DiscussionWhat Is The Role Of The Critic In New Play Development?
Panel will include Representatives from the American Theater Critics Association, The Dramatists Guild and Guest Playwrights
Sunday, Feb. 10 at Noon - 1:30 p.m.
Mandell Theater
Free with PlayFest button

Play-in-a-DayProduced for PlayFest by Orlando Fringe Festival Artistic Director, Beth Marshall
Monday, Feb. 11 at 7:00 p.m.
Margeson Theater
$5 with PlayFest button
Enjoy brand new 10-minute plays that were created
in only one day -- from blank page to the stage. Six
adventurous writers will learn the theme of their play
and meet their director and cast through a random
drawing held Sunday, Feb. 10 following the Panel
Discussion.

Typewriter Plays
Assorted typewriters will be scattered throughout
the Shakespeare Center Lobby. Try your hand at a
one-page, 2-character play. Typewriter plays will be
collected and a winning entry will be selected by a
specialized team of judges for a cool prize at the end
of PlayFest 2008!

The engineers behind the first Apollo moon landing are in big trouble. President Kennedy has ordered the United States must beat the Russians to the first
manned landing on the moon. Time is running out, so there is only one thing left to do...Blue Sky it! Enter Buck Rogers, Icarus, Galileo, Snoopy, and the Red
Baron as the heavenly heroes that inspired these NASA engineers to pursue their boyhood dreams of space exploration.

Prince Manfred has ruled Otranto for years, despite his fear of a prophecy that he will lose power when the true owner of the castle grows "too large to
inhabit it." When a giant helmet falls from the sky killing son Conrad on his wedding day, followed by enormous body parts appearing throughout the castle,
Manfred must scramble to divorce his wife, marry his son's fiancee and produce a male heir before the prophecy is fulfilled.

Mary Jane Kelly has a problem. She's a pound forty behind in her rent, she's lost her key and her boyfriend has moved out. It's 1888 -- not a good time to
be poor and unfortunate on the streets of London. Somewhere out there in the foggy shadows of night, one of the history's most notorious criminals, Jack
the Ripper, is at work. Mary only has two ways to secure her own front door. One of them is prostitution. The other is selling something she shouldn't posses
in the first place, something she'll have to betray her murdered best friend and herself to give up.

It's 1953. Famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey is giving a speech in Troy, NY when he is accosted by a young woman in the audience who is strongly opposed
to any scientific study of human sex. Kinsey tries to respond, but plagued with a weak heart since childhood, collapses. The play then travels back and forth
in time to examine Kinsey's life and work. It is a highly theatrical and fictionalized biography, which reveals the raw emotions that often hide beneath the
seemingly cold search for scientific truths. Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story contains sexually explicit material. Mature audiences only.

Professor Samantha Stafford is trying to write a book on Shakespeare in the midst of a host of distractions. One of her students is madly in love with her.
Her publicist wants her to do something more commercial. And she is persistently haunted by an entity claiming to be the ghost of Christopher Marlowe.
Meanwhile, Jack Hooper, a librarian who just might be a match for Dr. Stafford, has lost a prized manuscript to a mysterious thief.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME BY VICTOR HUGOAdapted by Suzanne O'Donnell from the novel by Victor Hugo

It is evening in a Parisian tavern, Pomme d'Eve. Pierre Gringoire, celebrated poet and playwright enters and is begged by the patrons to give a speech or recite
a poem. Instead, granting a particular request from a mysterious man at the bar, he begins to tell the infamous tale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Three of Franz Kafka's most elusive and phantasmagorical short stories, The Hunger Artist, A Report to an Academy and The Country Doctor are brought to the
stage. The transformation of the animal and human body and soul are examined amidst swirling snow storms, raging seas and a dark and mysterious circus
midway menagerie.

LETTERS TO SALABy Arlene Hutton
Based on Sala's Gift by Ann Kirshner. Originally conceived by Laurena Sacharow.

In 1940, sixteen-year-old Sala Garncarz volunteered to take her sister's place in a Nazi forced labor camp. During the next five years, in seven different camps,
Sala received over 350 pieces of mail. Risking her life, she managed to save every single letter...and then hide them for almost fifty years.

Reading of Act I only.
A brutal murder. An abandoned child.
A disenchanted son. A desperate mother.
A dying saint. A wayward priest.
A passionate detective. A lost masterpiece.
And nothing is quite what it seems.
A new play by John Pielmeier tackles faith, art, and the politics of disbelief.

MISS JULIE: FREEDOM SUMMERAn adaptation of August Strindberg's original play by Stephen Sachs

Limited engagement! It's the 4th of July, 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi - just two days after the signing of the Civil Rights Act by President Johnson. Miss
Julie, the daughter of a wealthy white Superior Court Judge is drinking and dancing with the servants in the barn. Meanwhile her father's African American
chauffeur, John, and cook Christine are judging her in the kitchen. But a moment of passion will soon change the lives of all three for eternity.

On a bleak, autumn evening in 1921, a young boy named Geoffrey Pitts discovers that the beloved wife of the Baptist minister, Mrs. Celia Rose Richards, has
stolen the only car in town and vanished without a trace. Neither his parents, his teacher, nor townsfolk know anything about the mysterious flight. With
the aid of his friend and confidante, Taffy Prull, Geoffrey decides to find Celia Rose and uncover the truth about her disappearance. But in doing so, Geoffrey
uncovers hometown secrets that will change life there forever.

It's 1880 and Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse are in the middle of the
War of Currents, as Westinghouse's Alternating Current becomes a serious rival
to Edison's Direct Current. Westinghouse is trying to hold onto his scheming
wife, Margueritte, who wants to be an actress, Thomas Edison is using her to
get William Kemmler to kill his wife, and Trog and Clay are two foolish, dogcatching
hobos at the center of it all. Based on actual events, court transcripts
and a little imagination.

Set during late October of 1517, this sprightly and audacious battle of
wits features university colleagues Dr. Faustus (a man of appetites), Martin
Luther (a man of faith), and their student Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (a
youth struggling not only with his beliefs but also with his tennis game).
Playwright David Davalos brings us the story behind the story of Hamlet in a
highly entertaining and accessible exploration of reason versus faith.

A mouse shows up at a little boy's house and asks for a cookie. The mouse
receives the cookie and wants a glass of milk. He receives the glass of milk
and wants a straw. He receives the straw...The rest becomes a chain of
never-ending events!

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee."

Three mysterious witches give Macbeth a prophecy that he will become King.
Spurred on by his ambitious wife, he quickly decides to take power at any cost
and plunges his country into war, destruction, intrigue and murder. This special
production will be performed arena style "in the round." Don't miss it!

The hooded, masked fiends who turn up in unexpected corners are only some of the horrors that await an audience in Orlando Shakespeare Theater's Macbeth.

A trio of gaping, hollow-eyed witches intones the famous spell, "Double, double toil and trouble" as if they are summoning a beast from below. The creepy form of a baby doll floats high in the air. Dogs bark feverishly, owls scream, and the natural world seems to have turned upside down.

None of those monstrosities, though, strikes at the gut as compellingly as the fear in the face of a frightened mother or the extinguished cries of a baby lying unprotected in its crib.

The old evils work best in director Jim Helsinger's Macbeth, a gorgeously chilly production that connects most effectively with theatergoers when it finds the humanity in Shakespeare's text.

Helsinger has summoned up his images from horror stories of all kinds -- from movies, from popular culture and especially from a kind of Japanese modern dance called Butoh, in which blank-eyed, white-faced performers move slowly and spasmodically across a stage. In this Macbeth, the visions of Butoh transform the tragedy's three witches into weird, alien beings, who appear from a pit below the earth and seem to be in thrall to some kind of powerful, otherworldly lord.

But those chilling images register in the head, not the heart, and so does much of this production of Shakespeare's dark thriller. Only at some of the play's most vivid moments -- when Lady Macduff and her children are threatened, when the leering ghost of Banquo stalks a terrified Macbeth around a banquet hall -- does this Macbeth hit us where we live.

Much of the play's coldness, of course, began with Shakespeare, creator of a pair of central characters who turn bad so quickly that you can hardly believe your ears. In Orlando, Jean Tafler makes a hard, sharp-eyed Lady Macbeth, a woman who is all vaulting ambition. And Ian Bedford, a tall, arresting actor with a shaved and tattooed head, swiftly sets aside his rampant sexual energy for a more single-minded, murderous goal.

An elegantly bleak production design sets the tone -- Bob Phillips' spartan octagon in the center of the room, with seating on all four sides around it and, above the actors' heads, great wooden beams pierced by spikes; Denise Warner's martial costumes in somber blacks and grays and reds the color of dried blood.

But elegance doesn't draw us in, and neither, unfortunately, do the cadre of actors playing soldiers (thanes and generals and their offspring), many of whom don't really register as individuals or make their meanings clear. There are exceptions, of course -- Steven Patterson's genial Duncan, Timothy Williams' lucid Ross, Paul Bernardo's suspicious Banquo (and later his grinning, bloody ghost) and most of all Eric Zivot's fury-driven Macduff. But too many others make little impression, and there are long discussions during which we may wonder what on earth they're talking about.

Anne Hering makes a wonderfully bawdy Porter (a beautifully unconventional bit of casting) and a moving force as the besieged Lady Macduff. But she plays at least a couple of other characters, and her reappearance so often begins to seem comical. Young Owen Teague does a fine job as the little Macduff son, and the three witches -- played by Erin Cameron-Beute, Jennifer Drew and Jennie Sirianni -- are suitably creepy.

Much of that creepiness works, especially the ritualistic killings (although it's a little peculiar to see the murderers pause to wipe up the blood). But there's something distancing about a Macbeth so monomaniacal and a Macbeth so coolly grim. "I must feel it as a man," says Macduff when he is admonished to avenge his family's deaths. So, too, must we.